(Australian) HECS (pron: hex) is Australia's Student Loan taken as a small tax for however long it takes to pay it off depending on your dept size and income, higher your income, higher your hecs payments (usually higher paying professions, doctors, lawyers etc have higher hecs depts due to their higher course fees, but they ultimately work in higher paying professions and you get the picture). Payments are unnoticible until your pay bracket increases, or you recieve a bounus when the Hecs takes a much larger than usual slice of your pay, making you feel you busted your ass for nothing.